CALL FOR ROYAL COMMISSION

Chronicle (Levin), 13 February 1947, Page 6

CALL FOR ROYAL COMMISSION

-Press Association

bii Telearanh—

•CHFJSTCHUKCH, Feb. 12. The opinion that the time had arrived wlien a Koyal C'oinmission should investigate the wliole wage strueture m New Zealand and establish principles to guide the fixing of wages, 'was expressed today by Mr. H. G. Kilpatrick, secretary of the Cauterbury Freezing Workers TJnion. He contended that the inultiplicity of wage fixing autliorities JLcd to anomalies and eventually industrial unrest. Mr. Kilpatrick is president of the New Zealand Freezing Workers Federation and he said the announcement by the Minister of Labour that the Government would allow the Federation of Labour to present a case to the Court of Arbitration for an all round increase in wages, would be welcomed no doubt by all workers and their organisations as evidence of the . Gpvernment 's in- ' fcention to review the wage strueture.

While the announcement, on the faee of it, ivas good it should be realisea tliat a tlat geueral mcreaae would only perpetuate existing anomalies. " During the , war," said Mr. Kilpatrick, "some large important groups were able by direct negotiation apart from the Arbitration Court, to achieve greater relative gains in wages than chose achieved by the smaller and .vcaker groups dependent on the court. fhese disparities have come about in some measure because there is more than oue wage fixing authority, for tnstance the Government itself, the Coal Mines Council, the Eailway Industrial Tribunal and the Waterfront Gommission. Seamen have their wages adjusted by Government regulation. Groups who have their wages fixed outeide the Court of Arbitration have achieved the greatest relative gains. Over recent years these precedents, if tliey may be given that deseription, have been largely ignored by the Court ,'m fixing rates of wages of a laTge num(ber of • smail groups that come within its jurisdietion. "

Mr. Kilpatrick said the establishment of geheral principies of wage policy would minimise the anomalies and inequalities which now obtained and industrial unrest which would flow -while these inequalities remained. "A Eojral Gommission should be set up without delay to investigate wages 'and to establish the principies of wage fixing applieable to all workers. Such a Gommission should take into account. degrees of skill, whether tlie work is light or heavy, danger, dirty and >et conditions, hours during which the work is • performed, and all f actors which, down the years, have come to/ie regarded as deserving weight in- arriving at just wage rates, If ,it is inii portant, and I agree that it is, that there should be a Eoyal Commission on licensing and .gaming, tlien it is far more important that there should be a Commission on wages," concluded Mr* Kilpatrick. .